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ORNGE helicopter crash: “Black hole” effect could have brought down air ambulance

“Black hole” effect, mechanical failure and pilot error among possible causes as probe begins into crash of ORNGE air ambulance in northern Ontario.

Rob Giguere, chief operating officer for ORNGE, speaks to the media in Mississauga after a fatal air ambulance accident claimed the lives of two paramedics and two pilots en route to Attawapiskat on Friday. (Michelle Siu / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

OTTAWA—It’s been called the “black hole” effect, when sky and ground blur into one seamless, disorienting curtain of darkness.

That’s what the crew of the ORNGE chopper would have faced soon after their midnight take-off from Moosonee airport. And it may have been their downfall as the Sikorsky S-76 crashed into the ground just minutes later, killing all four onboard.

It’s a phenomenon that has claimed many pilots, most notably John F. Kennedy Jr., who crashed his light plane into the Atlantic Ocean during a night flight over water in 1999. U.S. investigators later said that Kennedy lost control flying in the dark haze because of “spatial disorientation.”

On Friday, contact was lost with the chopper soon after its departure. So far, there has been no indication that crew signalled they were having troubles. In a statement Friday, ORNGE said it had no indication about what caused the accident.

Investigators from the Transportation Safety Board of Canada were on their way to northern Ontario Friday to begin their on-scene assessment. They will be looking at all elements of the accident, such as human factors, pilot training and the mechanical fitness of the 33-year-old helicopter.

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The captain, Don Filliter, had been flying choppers for 20 years; the first officer, Jacques Dupuy, since 1996. With such an experienced crew at the controls, one veteran pilot speculated to the Star that a catastrophic mechanical failure may have caused the wreckage. If so, the position of the bits of wreckage will provide vital clues to investigators about the accident sequence, he said.

ORNGE said Friday it had temporarily grounded its five remaining S-76 helicopters “out of an abundance of caution.”

But investigators will almost certainly be looking at whether this crash fits a pattern they’ve already flagged as a worrisome safety trend in Canada — controlled flight into terrain.

That’s when pilots inadvertently fly into the ground or water, usually at night or in bad weather or poor visibility.

“Such conditions reduce a pilot’s situational awareness of surroundings and make it difficult to tell whether the aircraft is too close to the ground,” according to the safety board, which counted 13 such accidents in 2010 and 14 in 2011.

Visual spatial disorientation was blamed as the cause of a previous air ambulance accident in 2008 when a Sikorsky S-76 crashed into a forest during its night-time approach to a helipad in Temagami. Three of the four crew on board were seriously injured.

Investigators noted the risks of flying over a “featureless landscape” with few lights on the ground, creating a “black hole” effect due to the lack of visual clues for pilots.

That crash happened even though the aircraft was equipped with an enhanced ground proximity warning system to alert the crew to a possible collision with terrain. And the pilots had received special training in night operations to learn “black hole approach and departure techniques,” according to the report.

On Friday, the weather around Moosonee was “adequate” for flying according to ORNGE, although there were patches of rain and mist.

The Sikorsky pilots would have faced inky darkness soon after lift-off and been relying on their flight instruments for reference, one former air ambulance pilot told the Star.

“Up north, there (are) no visual references, so you’d be right on the instruments right away,” said the pilot.

“You would take off and continue as if you went into cloud right away,” he said. “You wouldn’t be operating visual at all.”

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board has investigated fatal incidents involving the Sikorsky S-76s and at least twice recommended these helicopters be equipped with terrain awareness and warning system, which would give the crew ample warning that they are danger of crashing into water or land, especially important during visual flight.

An investigation into a 2004 crash in the Gulf of Mexico off Galveston, Texas, determined that had the helicopter been equipped with this warning device the accident may not have happened.

“The flight crew was not adequately monitoring the helicopter’s altitude and missed numerous cues to indicate that the helicopter was inadvertently descending toward the water,” the board’s report stated.

“If a terrain awareness and warning system had been installed aboard the accident helicopter . . . (it) should have provided the flight crew with ample time to recognize that the helicopter was descending toward the water, initiate the necessary corrective actions, and recover from the descent.”

It’s not known whether the aircraft involved in Friday’s crash was equipped with the terrain warning system. A spokesperson for ORNGE said it would be up to safety board investigators to determine the helicopter’s equipment.

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